At the beginning of October I switched my workout goals to more of a muscle gaining routine.

In the fall, I start switching things around a little to start gaining lean muscle.
In the winter, it's more muscle gaining, with lower reps.
In the spring, I switch to start leaning out.
In the summer, my main concentration is to hold on to the muscle I gained in the winter and to get as "cut" as I can.

I think it's important to cycle your goals like that. Otherwise you hit too many plateaus and it's boring.

So now my workout is:

Weights 3 days a week
- Day 1: Chest, Shoulders, Triceps (pushing muscles) - keeping the reps between 8-12
- Day 2: Legs - keeping the reps between 8-12
- Day 3: Back and Biceps (pulling muscles) - keeping the reps between 8-12

I also start each workout with a power move (I guess that's what it would be called) Barbell Bench (day 1), Heavy Squats (day 2), and Deadlifts (day 3).

I leave a day of rest between each weight workout.

I do a stretching workout 1-2 times a week. Do Muay Thai once a week. And only add in an extra cardio day if I notice I need to lean out a little.

In a couple months (probably starting in December), my split will be the same, but I will lower the rep ranges on all of the exercises to 6-8 reps and add more power moves.

Might as well give me matches and alcohol... or just alcohol. I'll find a way.

It'd be pretty great if we all went on a hiking trip... for health... and reading by campfires 'n' shit. xec8 could come out of hiding and join in... maybe sing or play an instrument... or something. Idk. It's all pretty pleasant and awesome. My mind is wandering again.

Might as well give me matches and alcohol... or just alcohol. I'll find a way.

It'd be pretty great if we all went on a hiking trip... for health... and reading by campfires 'n' shit. xec8 could come out of hiding and join in... maybe sing or play an instrument... or something. Idk. It's all pretty pleasant and awesome. My mind is wandering again.

In my head, when I read this... you sounded sooooo high.

I'm not a big fan of camping but I do like campfires. But those are neither healthy nor fitful since they often lead to s'mores.

Without tons of supplements and steroids, you really can't add that much muscle weight naturally. So as long as my main concern is to stay lean, I don't have to worry about getting huge. I can get strong, but you don't really get that much bigger naturally.

So I know I said I was going to go to a more typical workout for the winter, but that's just boring... So I tried something different today that I got from the book You Are Your Own Gym (which is an excellent book btw and I highly recommend it - no equipment needed at all and it's all great workouts).

I did 4 exercises. Each one for 7.5 minutes before moving on to the next.

I did them in a ladder pattern - which works like this:

You do 1 rep and then rest for as long as that rep took.
Then you do 2 reps and rest for as long as those took.
Then 3, continuing the pattern.
You keep moving up the "ladder" until you know you won't be able to do the next number and then you go back down until you hit 1 rep again. If your 7.5 minutes isn't up yet, you start the whole thing again.

After the 7.5 minutes you rest for a minute and then move to the next exercise.

The 4 exercises I did were:
- Push-ups
- Let Me Ups (it's kind of like an upside down push-up. You lay on your back under a bar and pull yourself up keeping your body rigid)
- Body-weight shoulder presses (it's where you bend at the hips and do a push-up with your body looking like an upside down V so your shoulders are taking most of the weight)
- Let Me Ins (you straddle a door and hold on to the door handle on each side and use basically do rows with your body weight as the resistance)

If anybody tries this type of workout or wants me to throw some more of these out - let me know. :)

So far I haven't reached my goal of gaining any weight. I have slowly started adding more weight to certain workouts. I have toned up a lot so I'm happy about that. I'm hoping to start running again but my knees have not sounded to good lately so I'm a little worried.

Important Disclaimer: Although this is Chuck Palahniuk’s official website, we are in essence, more an official ‘fansite.’ Chuck Palahniuk himself does not own nor run this website. Nor did he create it. It was started by Dennis Widmyer, who is the webmaster and editor of most of the content. Chuck Palahniuk himself should not be held accountable nor liable for any of the content posted on this website. The opinions expressed in the news updates, content pages and message boards are not the opinions of Chuck Palahniuk nor his publishers. If you are trying to contact Chuck Palahniuk, sending emails to this website will not get you there. You should instead, take the more professional route of contacting his publicist at Doubleday.